PICAXE, I salute you!

They have to have credit.
At an outlay of £10 I have the entire setup needed to do the following (beginnings of a 4 digit code lock)

0 1 Q
0 0 x
0 1 1
1 0 2
1 1 3

So two wires, 3 LEDs. All expandable, and the chip only arrived yesterday (the day after I ordered it).
How's that for ease of use!

PICAXE's are impressive little devices, particularly for the price!.

The only problems are their very small memory space and slow speed, but for many purposes that doesn't matter.